TY - JOUR
T1 - Unexpected death due to right-sided infective endocarditis in a methamphetamine abuser
AU - Takasaki, Tomoya
AU - Nishida, Naoki
AU - Esaki, Rie
AU - Ikeda, Noriaki
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors wish to express their special gratitude to Miss K. Miller for helpful advice on the manuscript. This report was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid (No. 12770219) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan.
PY - 2003/3
Y1 - 2003/3
N2 - A case of unexpected death due to right-sided infective endocarditis (IE) in a 44-year-old female methamphethamine abuser is presented. The woman was taken to a hospital by ambulance with a high fever having almost lost consciousness. She died about 6 h after admission. Autopsy revealed IE of the tricuspid valve. Septic thrombi from the lung were seen in other organs, and accordingly she was considered to have already been in a septic state on admission. Right-sided IE is relatively rare among the overall cases of IE, and is considered to result in good prognosis. It is also considered that right-sided IE occurs commonly among addictive drug abusers. We should therefore bear in mind that the presence of right-sided IE may be a predicting factor of drug abuse even if the injection site is not clearly visible, and for this reason, a lexicological analysis of the addictive drugs should be carried out.
AB - A case of unexpected death due to right-sided infective endocarditis (IE) in a 44-year-old female methamphethamine abuser is presented. The woman was taken to a hospital by ambulance with a high fever having almost lost consciousness. She died about 6 h after admission. Autopsy revealed IE of the tricuspid valve. Septic thrombi from the lung were seen in other organs, and accordingly she was considered to have already been in a septic state on admission. Right-sided IE is relatively rare among the overall cases of IE, and is considered to result in good prognosis. It is also considered that right-sided IE occurs commonly among addictive drug abusers. We should therefore bear in mind that the presence of right-sided IE may be a predicting factor of drug abuse even if the injection site is not clearly visible, and for this reason, a lexicological analysis of the addictive drugs should be carried out.
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U2 - 10.1016/S1344-6223(02)00058-5
DO - 10.1016/S1344-6223(02)00058-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 12935653
AN - SCOPUS:0037348433
SN - 1344-6223
VL - 5
SP - 65
EP - 68
JO - Legal Medicine
JF - Legal Medicine
IS - 1
ER -
